MUSIC OF THE SPHERES: Truly, these are the dog days of summer. The ancient Greeks named this sweltering stretch of season for the brightly burning Dog Star, whose easterly luminance in the dawn's first breaths foretold hotter, more humid times. In contemporary Santa Barbara, the fortnight forthcoming foretells some hot shows played by rising stars not just celestially, but musically, too.
On Saturday, August 11, you could saunter out to the always-cozy Mercury Lounge (5871 Hollister Ave., Goleta) to see a performance by Los Angeles acts Vinyl Williams and Winter. Indie rockers Vinyl Williams bill themselves as “celestial pop,” and their music fits nicely within the spell of these astral August weeks. Picture the sound of a dreamy, swoony summer haze and stony reveries, draped in alluring drums and cooling washes of reverbed-out guitar. The band comes offering the treasure-like glimmer of its new album, Opal, all iridescently melodic.
And what better time than summer to hear Winter? The music of one Samira Winter, she spins a prismatically cathartic indie rock sound she deems Ethereality (the title of her album, and her self-descriptor), a beautiful pinwheel of elements nostalgic, melancholic, and ecstatic. It does have the kind of sweetly bittersweet magic you would feel were a surprise snowflake flurry to festoon you on an otherwise sunny beach day or ice-cream outing.